The wife of disgraced medico-legal lawyer Zuko Nonxuba has, like her husband, also been struck from the roll of attorneys – partly stemming from the same allegations that led to her spouse’s disbarring.
The Cape Times reports that Nonxuba was accused of stealing millions from disabled children, mostly in the Eastern Cape. His wife, Novelwano Nonxuba, worked at her husband’s firm at the time, later leaving to open her own practice.
The Legal Practice Council (LPC) had also brought an application against her before the Gauteng High Court.
Most of the cases where money vanished involved parents of children who were injured at birth because of negligence by medical personnel during delivery, resulting in loss of oxygen, foetal distress and, ultimately, cerebral palsy.
Zuko Nonxuba had represented the children who suffered debilitating mental and physical harm because of the negligence of Eastern Cape Health Department staff.
In all five claims, the MEC for Health was ordered to pay more than R348m in damages to Nonxuba’s law firm, which, in turn, was supposed to establish trusts to administer the monies for the benefit of the disabled – but which was not done.
In the latest case against Novelwano Nonxuba, the court found she was as responsible for the theft of the trust monies as her husband.
Judges Nolumtu Bam and Norman Davis ordered her to surrender her certificate of enrolment as an attorney within two weeks.
After being admitted as an attorney in February 2018, she had worked alongside her husband at Nonxuba Incorporated Attorneys, three years later, starting her own firm under the name of N A Nonxuba Incorporated Attorneys.
She was suspended from practice last year by this court, pending finalisation of the present proceedings.
The charges of misconduct levelled against her by the LPC concern the same facts as those levelled against her husband, regarding the five court orders that damages must be paid towards the five children who never received the money.
While the Nonxubas apparently never told the families what had happened to the money, it is the LPC’s case that the funds – running into multi-millions – were stolen from the trust account.
Novelwano Nonxuba’s defence was that she did not know what happened in her husband's trust account affairs. She demanded evidence, claiming that the LPC had not performed an audit of the second respondent’s (husband’s firm) trust banking account.
“How the first respondent (Nonxuba) was able to paddle two canoes of not knowing what was going on in the trust account, and at the same time, refute the claims of theft and impropriety in the management of the trust account of the second respondent, remains unexplained,” the court said.
It was also noted that the families of the five children are, meanwhile, living in poverty, and that there are currently 24 claims lodged against the husband’s law firm, amounting to more than R204m.
The court also noted that her own firm has not been in existence for very long, yet its bookkeeping was in a state of disarray with no client files maintained. A curator has been appointed to administer the two trust accounts of the law firms belonging to her and her husband.
Cape Times PressReader article – Errant lawyer’s wife also disbarred (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Medico-legal lawyer disbarred for stealing millions from disabled children
Justice in sight for cerebral palsy victims of rogue attorney
Lawyer who blew disabled children’s millions ‘should be struck off’